Whenever you have a movement that claims there can "be no argument," as Mr. Gore puts it, there should be a red flag waiving in your mind. Everything is debatable. If someone claims that it isn’t, you can be sure that there is something to hide and an agenda to protect.

Here’s some excerpts from the article, with my summary titles:

1. Current defectors just the tip of the iceberg

Many former believers in catastrophic man-made global warming have recently reversed themselves and are now climate skeptics.The names included below are just a samplingof the prominent scientists who have spoken out recently to oppose former Vice President Al Gore, the United Nations, and the media driven “consensus” on man-made global warming.

But after further examining the science behind Kyoto, Wiskel reversed his scientific views completely and became such a strong skeptic, that he recently wrote a book titled “The Emperor’s New Climate: Debunking the Myth of Global Warming.” A November 15, 2006 Edmonton Sun article explains Wiskel’s conversion while building his “Kyoto house”: “Instead, he saidhe realized global warming theory was full of holes and ‘red flags,’ and became convinced that humans are not responsible for rising temperatures.” Wiskel now says “the truth has to start somewhere.”

4. Dearth of evidence.

Shaviv also wrote on August 18, 2006 that a colleague of his believed that “CO2 should have a large effect on climate” so “he set out to reconstruct the phanerozoic temperature. He wanted to find the CO2 signature in the data, but since there was none, he slowly had to change his views.” Shaviv believes there will be more scientists converting to man-made global warming skepticism as they discover the dearth of evidence.

5. Better data showed CO2 was not that big an influence, but scientists were slow to turn because of the personal time investment they had made, and their paychecks now depended on it.

Evans noted how he benefited from climate fears as a scientist. “And the political realm in turn fed money back into the scientific community. By the late 1990’s, lots of jobs depended on the idea that carbon emissions caused global warming. Many of them were bureaucratic, but there were a lot of science jobs created too. I was on that gravy train, making a high wage in a science job that would not have existed if we didn’t believe carbon emissions caused global warming. And so were lots of people around me; and there were international conferences full of such people. And we had political support, the ear of government, big budgets, and we felt fairly important and useful (well, I did anyway). It was great. We were working to save the planet! But starting in about 2000, the last three of the four pieces of evidence outlined above fell away or reversed,” Evans wrote.

Note that this confirms one of my supporting theories for why many scientists are duped by evolution – because they have years invested in the idea, not to mention an associated ego investment that keeps them from wanting to appear wrong.

6. Global warming is more politics than science now, and despite the new evidence, change comes slowly because of the silencing of critics with entrenched views and foregone conclusions.

The new ice core data shows that past warmings were *not* initially caused by rises in atmospheric carbon, and says nothing about the strength of any amplification. This piece of evidence casts reasonable doubt that atmospheric carbon had any role in past warmings, while still allowing the possibility that it had a supporting role,” he added.

“Unfortunately politics and science have become even more entangled. The science of global warming has become a partisan political issue, so positions become more entrenched. Politicians and the public prefer simple and less-nuanced messages. At the moment the political climate strongly supports carbon emissions as the cause of global warming, to the point of sometimes rubbishing or silencing critics,” he concluded.

7. Kyoto protocols are based on old data that has since been disproved – the panic is not warranted.

Murty was one of the 60 scientists who wrote an April 6, 2006 letter urging withdrawal of Kyoto to Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper which stated in part, "If, back in the mid-1990s, we knew what we know today about climate, Kyoto would almost certainly not exist, because we would have concluded it was not necessary.”

Jaworowski, who has published many papers on climate with a focus on CO2 measurements in ice cores, also dismissed the UN IPCC summary and questioned what the actual level of C02 was in the atmosphere in a March 16, 2007 report in EIR science entitled “CO2: The Greatest Scientific Scandal of Our Time.” “We thus find ourselves in the situation that the entire theory of man-made global warming—with its repercussions in science, and its important consequences for politics and the global economy—is based on ice core studies that provided a false picture of the atmospheric CO2 levels,” Jaworowski wrote. “For the past three decades, these well-known direct CO2 measurements, recently compiled and analyzed by Ernst-Georg Beck (Beck 2006a, Beck 2006b, Beck 2007), were completely ignored by climatologists—and not because they were wrong. Indeed, these measurements were made by several Nobel Prize winners, using the techniques that are standard textbook procedures in chemistry, biochemistry, botany, hygiene, medicine, nutrition, and ecology. The only reason for rejection [of the newer, more accurate data] was that these measurements did not fit the hypothesis of anthropogenic climatic warming. I regard this as perhaps the greatest scientific scandal of our time,” Jaworowski wrote.

8. We are wasting resources on global warming. There’s no real data, only computer models which "prove nothing."

Bellamy said “global warming is largely a natural phenomenon. The world is wasting stupendous amounts of money on trying to fix something that can’t be fixed.” “The climate-change people have no proof for their claims. They have computer models which do not prove anything,” Bellamy added. Bellamy’s conversion on global warming did not come without a sacrifice as several environmental groups have ended their association with him because of his views on climate change. The severing of relations came despite Bellamy’s long activism for green campaigns.

“I accept there may be small changes. But I see the risk of anything serious to be minute,” [Dr. Chris de Freitas] added. “One could reasonably argue that lack of evidence is not a good reason for complacency. But I believe the billions of dollars committed to GW research and lobbying for GW and for Kyoto treaties etc could be better spent on uncontroversial and very real environmental problems (such as air pollution, poor sanitation, provision of clean water and improved health services) that we know affect tens of millions of people,” de Freitas concluded.

9. There is a sea change coming in the scientific community, reacting against the very political and panic driven approach to global warming.

“As the proxy results began to come in, we were astounded to find that paleoclimatic and paleoproductivity records were full of cycles that corresponded to various sun-spot cycles. About that time, [geochemist] Jan Veizer and others began to publish reasonable hypotheses as to how solar signals could be amplified and control climate,” Patterson noted. Patterson says his conversion “probably cost me a lot of grant money. However, as a scientist I go where the science takes me and not were activists want me to go.”

Patterson now asserts that more and more scientists are converting to climate skeptics. "When I go to a scientific meeting, there’s lots of opinion out there, there’s lots of discussion (about climate change). I was at the Geological Society of America meeting in Philadelphia in the fall and I would say that people with my opinion were probably in the majority

I am glad that thinking scientists have seen the red flags of fanaticism, and are brave enough to follow the data despite the political backlash. Reason again rescues us from bad science. Now if only people would start waking from the Darwin Delusion…

9 Responses

Do you doubt that warming exists? The evidence there is incontrovertible. There has been periods of warming in the Earth's past when humans made less of a footprint, that's for sure. The thing is, to prove it's related to human activity this time around. The above seems like just more politics to me (ie, heroic "dissenters" being persecuted for their beliefs, ala young-earth wingnuts). Has any data been collected concerning the sun's radiation output? Regardless, I rather doubt the world's other communities will reduce carbon-commissions. China is set to overtake us there, and they (along with mega-polluters India and Brazil) are exempt from the Kyoto Protocol's more draconian standards. If human survival is up to humans curtailing their propensities for stupidity, greed, and tribalism, we're doomed.

Do you doubt that warming exists? The evidence there is incontrovertible. No. But I doubt it's a crisis, and I doubt that we are causing it. I doubt that we should panic and waste money on it when there are more pressing environmental and political problems to spend money on.

"How can you claim he has his head in the sand after reading what he just posted and linked to?" Do some independent research into the matter and don't get your information from this site. Seeker links only to information that supports his opinion. He does not show what the vast majority of scientists are actually reporting. "Google" sites that are dedicated to science, not political/religious blogs which have their own agenda.

Josh, I am totally with you. You see, the pro GW crowd are so confident of their rightness (and righteousness), that they don't see the red flags of fanaticism in their camp, including suppression of dissent, failure to address real data challenges to their cause, and patronizing, if not arrogant attitudes. Being so confident of their rightness, many, like Cin, refuse to engage in reasonable discussion because they despise anyone who doubts. Such avoidance techniques as provided by Cin above (ad hominem, or accusations that it's not the whole story) are just non-useful ways to patronize doubters. And again, these scientists are the tip of the iceburg. And many global warmers may have missed the debate on Larry King Live, which included MIT Professor and former IPCC contributor Richard Lindzen, who has not only doubted global warming based on his own expertise, but explains why the IPCC reports are really more political in nature, and represent the dozen or so people who actually write it more than the entire 2500 scientists supposedly in accord. But it's going to take a lot more diligence to undo the alarmism and personal-value driven (rather than science driven) polemics of the global warming crowd. Of course, they MAY be right, but the evidence, as I have documented above, is causing a lot of scientists who are willing to lose grant money and popularity to follow the data where it leads (which is AWAY from Kyoto), rather than leading them to further alarm. Time will tell, but until then, we'll have to keep presenting the evidence.